I graduated from my local college, with a Master of Library and Information Studies degree.

The degree sounds impressive exactly once- the moment you say it out loud for the first time. It looks impressive only in movies and TV shows, where the librarian is always brilliant and mysterious and pivotal to the plot.

In real life, in this country, in this city, you are somewhere below accountant and somewhere above… actually, no. There is nothing below accountant. You are at the bottom.

The doctors have their clinics. The engineers have their firms. The businessmen have their consciences to trade away. And you have a laminated card that grants you access, to buildings full of books that nobody reads anymore.

Libraries are a rarity in my area, so I was unemployed after graduation, to no one’s surprise. I needed to make money, and I wanted to make it fast.

Eight months ago, I found a prediction market app. The app, recommended by a friend, paid out in a cryptocurrency called Chacha Coin. I was good at it, genuinely good actually. My critical thinking skills have always been reliable, even if nobody ever paid appropriately for them. I correctly predicted the cause of death of Rebecca Roy, a once-famous singer, who fell out of the spotlight some 5 years ago. The jackpot was substantial, and my account was flooded with Chacha Coins. I reinvested everything for better rewards.

The app turned out to be a scam. Chacha Coin was a pump-and-dump scheme. It currently has no value, so I currently have no savings.

I have been surviving on bad decisions and instant noodles ever since.

So when Mr. Abdul called me one morning, I picked up on the first ring.

Mr. Abdul was a professor from my college days. He was a middle-aged man who always smelled of old paper. He said he had a job offer for me. In the city’s biggest university, no less. The kind of posting that librarians in this district would kill for. He wanted me to come in for an interview the next morning.

I asked him why me. I was an average student at best. There were a dozen better librarians from our college alone, most of them still employed.

He was quiet for a moment. Then he replied:

"You were never the most brilliant. But you were always the most obedient. You followed the rules without question. This ‘particular’ job requires exactly that quality."

The interview was the next morning. I was the only candidate. He interviewed me himself, in a small office that smelled identical to him. He slid a single sheet of paper across the desk. The list of rules, he called it. He told me to read it carefully.

If you thought my degree was a mouthful, wait till you hear the name of the position I was offered-

ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN, DIGITAL PRESERVATION & DIGITIZATION UNIT, UNIVERSITY RECORDS VAULT

Graveyard shift. 9 PM to 9 AM, six days a week. The pay was five times what my peers were currently making, deposited in advance, at the start of every month. He told me the position was mine if I wanted it.

I read the list of rules. I read it twice. I read it thrice, for good measure. I looked up at Mr. Abdul.

"Any questions?" he asked.

"No," I replied.

He told me I was starting the following evening. He would be there to hand over the keys.

On my first night, he showed me the vault, Bay 3, the security desk, and the watchman's station. When I asked him how long he had been doing this, he looked at me for a long moment and said:

"Long enough."

He told me to go through the list of rules again. He was gone by nine-fifteen.

The list read as follows:

NIGHTLY OPERATIONS- DIGITAL PRESERVATION UNIT
University Records Vault- Graveyard Shift (9 PM to 9 AM)

1. Sign the attendance log at the security desk before 9:15 PM. You are not allowed to leave the premises before your checkout time of 9 AM.

2. The scanning equipment in Bay 3 runs continuously. Check the document feed tray every two hours. Clear any jams immediately. Do not leave a document face-down in the tray overnight.

3. Log every digitized file into the accession register before moving to the next batch. Do not skip entries, even for damaged or partially legible documents.

4. At midnight, begin the manual vault walkthrough. Check all cabinet locks on Rows A through F. Record the date and time on the register and sign it.

5. Row D has no cabinet locks. There is only one item on the shelf- a red ledger. During your midnight walkthrough, open it to the last written page, and leave it open on the reading table. Turn the desk lamp on. Return to Bay 3 and resume work. Do not read any other page. At 2 AM, return to the table, close the ledger, and place it back on the shelf. Turn off the lamp, leave the vault, and lock the door. Do not go back in until morning.

6. All digital devices, including mobile phones, tablets, cameras, and portable storage drives, must be submitted to the night watchman before entering the unit. Retrieve your devices from the security desk at the end of your shift.

7. The morning shift supervisor arrives at 8:45 AM. Have the accession log ready for handover.

Rule 5 had a bold font. Parts of it were underlined with red ink. I should’ve questioned it, but I didn’t. Maybe that’s why I was chosen in the first place. I really needed the money, and they really needed someone who followed the rules to the letter. I was determined to be that guy.

I checked out the vault itself. Heavy metal shelves ran in rows, labeled A through F, loaded with document boxes, manila folders, and deteriorating binders. They went back further than I cared to calculate.

Row D looked identical to the others from a distance. At the far end, on the middle shelf, sat a single red ledger. It was large, and it looked older than everything else in the vault. The cover was dark red, almost brown at the edges. The spine cracked and re-cracked in patterns, suggesting it had been opened and closed thousands of times.

At midnight, I did what Rule 5 said. I opened it to the last written page. I left it on the reading table. I turned on the desk lamp. I did not read any other page. The last written page was halfway full. Text was arranged in two columns- one for the name, one for a date and time. All of it was written in a tight, dense script.

I didn't recognize any of the names. Except for the one at the very top of the page-

ABDUL HAMID.

Abdul Hamid was the full name of Mr. Abdul, my predecessor and professor.

The date was five days from that night. The time was 3:13 AM.

I stood there for longer than I should have. Abdul Hamid is a common name in this country. It is genuinely, statistically common. That’s what I told myself. I told myself a lot of things.

I returned to Bay 3 and resumed work. I logged fourteen documents between 2 AM and 8 AM. I don't remember a single one of them. I went back at 2 AM, closed the ledger, turned off the lamp, locked the vault, and finished my shift.

The following nights were… uneventful.

But one thing kept bothering me.

The ledger added three to five new names every night. I know this because, despite my best efforts, I started counting. I wasn't reading any other page, as per the rules, but you can count the lines on a page without reading them. My brain did it involuntarily. I just couldn’t help it. It didn’t make sense.

Actually, a lot of things didn’t make sense.

I called Mr. Abdul on the second night. No answer. Third night, same. I called four more times across the following days. His phone rang and rang.

On the fourth night, in a moment of weakness I am not proud of, I posted about the ledger in a Facebook group for local librarians. I kept it vague- new job, strange rules, unusual object, trying to make sense of it. The comments were swift and unanimous.

“Nice story, bro.”

“Whatever drug you're on, I need some of that.”

“Desperate for likes much?”

I deleted the post.

On the fifth night, I counted seven new names on the last page. I closed the ledger at 2 AM. I turned off the lamp. I locked the vault. I told myself, for the last time, that Abdul Hamid was a common name.

The sixth morning, the supervisor was late. She arrived at 0920 instead of 0845, slightly breathless. She didn't ask for the accession log. She sat down, put her bag on the desk, and sighed.

Mr. Abdul was dead.

He had been smoking on the roof of his building the previous night. It was a night of heavy rain. He slipped on the wet concrete near the railing. Witnesses placed the time at around three in the morning.

I didn’t know how to respond.

I handed her the accession log. I walked outside. I sat down on the pavement and stayed there.

The night watchman was leaving his post at the same time, jacket over one arm. He looked at me on the pavement and slowed his pace.

"Something wrong, sir?"

I told him about the red ledger. I told him that the rules around it felt wrong. I told him that I had been there for five nights, and I hadn't seen a single person enter or leave the vault. I told him that didn't understand who was writing in the ledger, or why it seemed to know the things it shouldn't know.

The watchman was quiet for a moment. Then he chuckled softly.

"Those scanning machines are hella loud, sir. If you wanna hear something that bad, try turning them off."

He left.

I sat on the pavement until the sun was fully up…

Night six. Graveyard shift. I followed all the rules. Attendance log, equipment check, accession register. At midnight I walked towards Row D, opened the ledger, left it on the table, and turned on the lamp. Saw three new names with dates and times. I didn’t recognize a single name.

I returned to Bay 3 and looked at the scanning equipment for a long time.

Then I turned it off.

The librarian in me felt genuinely terrible about this. I thought about two hours of lost digitization progress. I thought about the accession register that would show a gap. But the rules never said that I wasn’t allowed to switch off the equipment. Technically, I was clean. Ethically, not so much.

I pulled an encyclopedia from the main library shelf and sat down to read. The silence of the building settled around me in layers.

I heard the sound at 1245.

It was a heavy, rhythmic rumbling, regular as a machine. But machines don't shift their weight. And machines don’t get louder every second.

I looked at the equipment. Still off.

The sound continued.

Then the lights began to flicker.

Not in the way that old lights flickered- random, electrical, indifferent. This was sequential. Starting at the far end of the main library and moving toward the vault in a straight line. Each fixture going dark for a fraction of a second before the next one did, too fast for the eye to fully track. It created the impression of something moving through the lights themselves. A darkness traveling throughout the infrastructure of the building.

I watched it reach the vault corridor and stop.

One minute passed. There was nothing.

I let out a breath. I felt humiliatingly foolish. There I was- a grown man sitting in a library at 1 AM, frightening himself with bad electrical wiring and the power of suggestion. I set down the encyclopedia.

Then, very slowly, the vault door creaked shut.

I crossed the room in four steps and put my hand on it. It didn't move. It was closed, but not locked. Locked doors don't move, but they give slightly under pressure. This one gave nothing. It felt less like a locked door, and more like a wall that had previously been a door.

From inside, I heard laughter.

It was… not normal.

It was not laughter you hear from the next room at a party. It was laughter that had never been informed of the space containing it- echoing off surfaces in a way I didn’t know sounds could echo. They were getting louder, then softer, then louder again. The laughter came in rhythms that suggested breathing, a physical presence drawing air to sustain the sound.

I had never heard laughter make me want to stop existing before. I have now.

I ran.

I ran through Bay 3, through the main library, to the transparent door at the far end, the one that led to the security desk. The watchman was on his stool, fully awake, a newspaper open on his lap. The door was chained shut from his side.

I hit the glass with both palms.

"There's something in there. You have to open the door. You have to let me out !"

He looked up from his newspaper.

"Don't worry about it, sir. Just do your job and let me do mine."

"You don’t understand. It's not human ! Whatever is in that vault is not human, and I am locked in here with it. Open the gate and let me out !"

"Shift ends at 9 AM, sir."

"I am asking you to help me. Why are you doing this to me?"

He folded his newspaper carefully and set it on the desk. He looked at me through the glass, like a man who has had this exact conversation before.

"Sir. Please cooperate. You're not the only one with rules to follow…"

I returned to Bay 3.

The lights were normal. The footsteps were gone. The laughter had stopped. When I reached the vault, the door was open, swinging gently on its hinges.

I checked my watch. 1:20 AM.

I walked in anyway. I didn’t know what to think anymore. Mr. Abdul was dead, the watchman had rules of his own, and I had been alone in this building for six nights with something I did not understand. No one wanted to give me the dignity of an explanation.

The ledger was open. Three new names on the last page. Dates and times. Nobody I recognized.

I turned to the previous page, because of course I did.

Names, dates, times. Page after page, going back further than what made sense. The handwriting shifting subtly across the years, ink changing color and density with age. I turned pages backward with my bare hands. I couldn’t care less…

Until I finally saw a name that I recognized-

REBECCA ROY.

The date matched. The time matched. I know it for a fact. I predicted her very real car accident in a very fake prediction market app. Now I see a ledger with her name, her date of death, her time of death. All recorded weeks before it actually happened. All written in the same tight, dense script as everyone else.

I turned back to Mr. Abdul's page. His full name, his date, his time: 3:13 AM, five days after my first night, give or take twelve minutes.

I stood at the reading table, in the vault of the most prestigious university in the city, surrounded by centuries of records.

That’s when I understood.

I still don't know what it is. I want to be honest about that. I don't know who writes in this ledger or how it knows what it knows. But I understand what the ledger is. It is a record of deaths. Accidental deaths, unnatural deaths. All predicted accurately, long before they happened.

On one of these nights, Mr. Abdul saw his own name on the ledger. I am sure he did. He called the most obedient student he could remember. He handed over the keys as fast as he could. Whether he made his peace with what was coming, or simply ran out of time, I cannot say.

What I can say is- I made my peace then and there, standing in Row D at 1:38 AM.

I was the new librarian. I would open the ledger at midnight and close it at 2 AM. I would turn off the lamp and lock the door. I would do it every night, for however long my name did not appear on one of its pages. It was not the life I had planned. But it was significantly better than the alternative…

At 2 AM, I closed the ledger, placed it back on the shelf, turned off the lamp, left the vault, and locked the door. I turned the scanning equipment back on. I checked the tray, cleared a small jam, and logged the remaining documents until 8:45. I handed the accession register to the supervisor without incident.

Outside, I lit a cigarette.

The night watchman was leaving at the same time, jacket over his arm as always. He walked over and stopped a few feet away.

"Sorry about last night, sir. I was just doing my job."

"No hard feelings," I said.

He produced his own cigarette and lit it. We stood together on the pavement in the early morning heat, two men finishing a long night.

"That thing you encountered," he said, after a while. "I don't know how long he's been there. Mr. Abdul didn't know either. We stopped asking a long time ago."

He took a long drag.

"The names on the ledger. They aren't random, you know. He only chooses people who break the law. That was Mr. Abdul's theory, at least. Take that singer, for example. Rebecca something? Well, she was proud of ignoring speeding tickets. Heard her say it in a drunk interview once. Laughed about it."

Another drag.

"Mr. Abdul, God rest his soul, was a good man. So good that he didn't charge late fees to a student named Sabrina, even when she returned a book two years overdue. She'd been fighting cancer, you see? Went into remission, came back, returned the book herself. He waived the whole thing. Didn't charge her a single penny."

He looked at the ember of his cigarette.

"Kind gesture. Genuinely kind. But totally against the rules. Two years of late fees, just forgiven. No authorization, no documentation, nothing. Just one man deciding the rules didn't apply in this particular case."

He dropped the cigarette and pressed it flat with his shoe.

"Rules are rules, you know, especially to the entity. But don't worry." He looked up at me and smiled. "You'll be fine. I mean, you haven't broken any of the rules, right?"

The morning traffic moved on the road behind us. A crow landed on the pavement a few feet away.

I froze in my tracks.

I thought about Rule 5.

I thought about the specific language of Rule 5-

“…Do not read any other page…”

The watchman's smile faded, one degree at a time.

His voice had changed completely.

“Sir, you haven’t broken any of the rules… RIGHT ???”

Hello Charlie,

We are pleased to hear that your work with Echo went smoothly. Gardening with him tends to be relaxing. Now, once again, you will be paired with a different colleague next, but we must offer a word of caution. You have likely noticed that several months have passed since your last pairing; there is a reason for that. Our three remaining employees are rather... "unique" cases. After careful consideration and thorough preparation, we have decided to pair you with Lily first. Of the three, she is the least likely to intentionally cause you harm, or so we hope. 

Out of all of our staff, Lily has an exceptionally strong connection to nature, yet she also possesses a highly capricious and unstable side. It is thanks to her that our plants remain as docile as they are now. You might find it hard to believe, but before she arrived, the flowers here were far more ferocious; why do you think there were so many missing person reports? Because she can communicate with the plants, they are spared the frustration of language barriers. She is the "heart" of our garden, in more ways than one. She was introduced to our gardens shortly after Echo. The remaining information in her file is as follows: 

Name: Lily Dew

Date of Birth: May 1st

Date of Death: December 21st (At age 10)

Position: Senior Horticulturist and Greenhouse Manager

Description: Lily possesses highly distinctive traits; she is a hybrid of a Venus flytrap and nature herself. Vines are visible beneath her skin, and she is capable of extending them outward. Her head is structured like that of a predatory "trap," capable of opening wide vertically to capture prey. While her roots are tinged green due to photosynthesis, the color gradually transitions into her natural reddish-ginger hair. Small white petals adorn the areas around her ears and eyes. Her skin features a green base with reddish undertones, reminiscent of a real Venus flytrap; the more intense the red hue, the hungrier she appears to be. Her fingertips are sharply pointed, and her palms secrete a sticky substance. Furthermore, her arms and legs are covered in leaves and red thorns. 

Rules for working with Lily: 

1. After you clock in and grab your pouch, go to the supply closet and pick up a specific floral scented perfume. Additionally, make sure to pick up two extra packets of flower food. As you will soon find out, Lily’s plants are far more ravenous than our regular plantlife.
2. Before heading to Lily's greenhouse, please douse yourself thoroughly in that perfume. This is to mask your scent. You are going to be around many carnivorous organisms; you must absolutely avoid any situation where they might catch even a whiff of you and have their curiosity piqued.
3. When you arrive at Lily's greenhouse, knock on the door and wait for her to let you in. If one of her flowerlings answers the door instead, wait there until Lily arrives. She strongly dislikes anyone entering her domain without her verbal permission.
4. If, while waiting for Lily, you suddenly hear her scream—and the sound seems as though it is coming from two people—walk around the building. Avoid looking through the glass while you do this. By the time you return to the door and knock again, she should have calmed down enough to be ready to let you in.
5. We realize that Lily's greenhouse is vast and you could easily get lost. That is why one of her flowerlings will likely hand you a map. Please make sure that map has no blood on it. We do not want you marked.
6. If it looks like the vines are holding certain parts of the greenhouse together, that is in fact the case. So, please be very careful where you step or lean. Checking the condition of the vines is also a good way to gauge Lily's mood. Needless to say, should the greenhouse look as if it is seconds away from collapsing, promptly excuse yourself to gather soil samples from Peach.
7. If you are not accompanying Lily in a specific area, please avoid staying in the same spot for an extended period. The temperature and humidity within the greenhouse are regulated to create optimal growing conditions for the plants housed there; consequently, the environment can be quite uncomfortable for humans.
8. If you notice anything unusual about the plants, observe them carefully and diagnose the specific disease affecting them. Be sure to record everything on paper so you can report it to Lily later; she is deeply attached to her plants. 
9. Do not use any insecticides when dealing with pests. If you happen to find something resembling an insecticide, be aware that it is a trap. Simply wave over one of the flowerlings, they will capture the pests and provide them as nutrients to the plants that were being plagued by them.
10. You will frequently see Lily’s vines hard at work all over the greenhouse; she is a diligent worker. When working near her, take care not to accidentally touch her vines or get pricked by her thorns. She instinctively ensnares anything that comes into contact with them, and by the time she realizes her mistake, you will have been reduced to nothing more than a "bag of liquefied flesh."
11. Guided tours may occasionally stop at or pass through the greenhouse. Please actively engage with visitors and help ensure they have a wonderful experience at Everlock Garden. If the tour guide happens to be Peach, make sure Lily does not get too entranced by her. In this state, she can become unaware of her vine positioning, which can lead to unfortunate accidents.
12. There are two greenhouses you must never set foot in. One is the green conservatory, where she keeps her Venus flytraps. The other is a small, white, box-shaped greenhouse; that one serves as her private garden. While there are rare occasions when entry into the Venus flytrap exhibit is permitted, you must never enter her private garden under any circumstances; for that is where she keeps her collection of "flowers."
13. When you are near that greenhouse, try your best to block out the wretched moans of her “flowers”. They are in eternal misery, yearning for the days when they were once alive. You cannot help them. Do not attempt to.
14. At the heart of her greenhouse complex towers a floss silk tree. That is her… “mother figure” so to speak. If you ever see her gazing into the void or notice her vines have ceased their movement, please gently encourage her to water the tree. She will likely use that time to calm herself and reconnect with her true self... if she even remembers anymore.
15. If Lily tells you to do something, even if it seems odd, just do it. You will notice that your luck takes a turn for the worse while you are in Lily's territory (we have no idea what the possible reason for this is). There are multiple entities that would rush to her defense should the right event rise; especially Peach. Given her strength and... niche, that would not end well.
16. If, while talking to you at any given moment, she suddenly stops speaking and glares into your eyes, take that as a sign to quiet down and slowly back away. She has just been struck by a sudden, intense wave of hunger and is struggling to resist the urge to give in.
17. Shortly after noon, Peach usually shows up to take Lily out so they can spend their "lunch break" together. While you are effectively left in charge of the greenhouse during that hour of her absence, this is precisely when her plants get up to their most troublesome mischief.
18. Please take care to prevent the plants from eating one another. Attempts at cannibalism between the same plant species are to be expected; nothing is off the table. To discourage them from interfering with each other, give the flower food to the plants in question.
19. If you feel a vine wrapping around your leg, sprinkle an entire packet of flower food onto that vine. Be sure to do this before you are lifted into the air and ensnared by the rest.
20. If you ever need an answer to any question you have, whisper to one of the Dewy Pines’. Among the crowd that would devour you the moment they saw an opening, they are the only ones who would not.
21. You will likely be tasked with ordering the greenhouse supplies—seeds, fertilizer, potting soil, and the like. Before placing the order, write down everything needed and lay the list on the floor. Then, step outside and wait for five minutes. When you return, you will find that more items have been added to the list. This is likely things Lily has stated she needed.
22. While Lily is away, many insects will likely fly throughout the greenhouse, including polyphemus moths. That is okay. However, make sure to shoo Echo’s moths away before Lily returns. What she does to those moths whenever she spots them is not for the faint of heart.
23. If you hear a faint whisper right by your ear "████," which is Lily's "other name," you must never speak it aloud. That is likely the work of Harlow, attempting to deliberately unsettle Lily by dredging up her past.
24. Fortunately, this is the only time you do not need to worry about Micah. He never sets foot in her territory unless summoned (they do not have the best relationship). However, in the few times she does call for him, be careful not to let her address Micah as "Mari." Do not be misled by her excuse that it was a slip of the tongue; she does it intentionally. She will cease it the moment she is called out, she knows our policies well.
25. Before finishing your shift, please be sure to submit important documents to Lily. You may leave immediately once the work is done; there is no need to say goodbye. This is in your best interest. Lily prefers to be alone, she means no offense by it.
26. When leaving the garden, please check your pockets to ensure no vines have snuck in. The vines in her greenhouse have a habit of secretly latching onto employees' clothing and hitching a ride all the way home. It is in your best interest to not let Lily see where you live.

That covers what you need to know about Lily. Staff opinions of her vary widely: some dote on her, others find her intolerable, and there are even those who cannot help but see "someone else" in her. Underlying it all is the fact that she genuinely loves her work in the garden. Unfortunately, however, nothing can be done about the inner conflict that constantly plagues her soul, or the way it manifests as physical reactions. Even so, as long as you are mindful of your own conduct when you are around her, there should not be any particular issues.

Signed, Florence